White Boy Anti-Heroes Vs Asian Man Heroes
The West is in rapid cultural flux. The East is remote, distant and thus easily exoticized with Orientalism. This is a recipe for cultural illiteracy, misunderstanding and ignorance. So, I hope to help clear these problems up with this post.
Grab some tea...
HERO
For thousands of years, traditionally and cross-culturally, heroes have typically combined great power with great sacrifice for the welfare of others.
a hero is any male or female who leaves the world of his or her everyday life to undergo a journey to a special world where challenges and fears are overcome in order to secure a reward (special knowledge, healing potion, etc.) which is then shared with other members of the hero’s community. - Joseph Campbell
In mythology and legend, a man, often of divine ancestry, who is endowed with great courage and strength, celebrated for his bold exploits, and favored by the gods.
A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life
ANTI-HERO
anti-heroes can be awkward, antisocial, alienated, cowardly, cruel, obnoxious, passive, pitiful, obtuse, or just ordinary. When the anti-hero is a central character in a work of fiction the work will frequently deal with the effect their flawed character has on them and those they meet along the narrative. In other words, an anti-hero is a protagonist that lives by the guidance of their own moral compass, striving to define and construe their own values as opposed to those recognized by the society in which they live.Without any real responsibilities or values to guide them anymore, these Gen-XYZ "anti-heroes" typically slide down slippery slopes into downward spirals of self-absorption and hedonistic self-indulgence. Sure, they "don't care" what gender you are - because they don't really care about anything! They only care about "you"...if you happen to have what they want to make them feel good at the moment (providing an "easier ejaculation" opportunity, drugs, etc.) But ultimately, they "don't care" about anything but themselves.
Many modern anti-heroes possess, or even encapsulate, the postmodern rejection of traditional values symptomatic of Modernist literature in general, as well as the disillusion felt after World War II and the Nuclear Age. It has been argued that continuing popularity of the anti-hero in modern literature and popular culture may be based on the recognition that a person is fraught with human frailties, unlike the archetypes of the white-hatted cowboy and the noble warrior, and is therefore more accessible to readers and viewers. This popularity may also be symptomatic of the rejection by the avant-garde of traditional values after the counter-culture revolution of the 1960s.
Why do you think:
40% of American babies are now born to single mothers?
The American divorce rate is 50%
55% of American men (and 59% of women!) cheat?
Do these stats show people who "really care" about each other? Or are just blind opportunists who care about nothing but their own self-gratification?
And what is a world, a nation, a society, a family, a relationship without true heroes anymore?
Just ask Britney...
CULTURE CLASH
The interesting thing is how these 2 archetypes would view each other. A hero would view an anti-hero as a weak, shiftless, irresponsible, defeatist loser with no loyalties but to his own. Whereas, an anti-hero would mock a hero as an oppressive, patriarchal, do-gooder egomaniac who is foolishly noble. Point being, either could be perceved as the good/bad guy depending on your particular era and milieu. Recent comic book adaptations like The Hulk and King Kong reflect our current post-modern counter-cultural predilection for anti-heroes, though.
So, the larger issue here is really a CULTURE CLASH between heroic culture and anti-heroic counterculture. Old World "hero" values that have worked for thousands of years vs the recent post-modern 60s "anti-hero" COUNTERCULTURE - which is still highly-experimental. Although the preliminary societal results (as seen above) already appear to be mildly devastating.
Perhaps the jury's still out... But, until post-modern counterculture can be proven over thousands of years to be SUPERIOR to the traditional "Old School" that got us here today, then I think it's premature to argue which is "less sexist"/"better"/etc. If anything, these are the same "looser" values that shortly preceded the fall of Rome.
But, while we're here at least let me clear up the 4 biggest Western misconceptions about Chinese culture:
1) Footbinding was Chinese patriarchal oppression. FALSE.
No man ever forced a Chinese woman to bind her feet. It was an elite women's fashion fad that started from the imitation of Western "ballet dancers," and was eventually passed down matriarchally to lower classes after that. It was essentially the Tang Dynasty version of boob jobs or corsets.
"Tang court women followed Persian and Turkish fashions, wearing dresses with tight-fitting bodices, pleated skirts, and hats with enormous veils. And it was apparently imitation of foreign toe-dancing groups that originally led upper-class Chinese women to bind their feet. At first it was just palace dancers who bound their feet slightly, like ballet dancers, to stand on their toes." - When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433 by Louise Levathes2) Female infantcide is epidemic in China. FALSE.
Some sex-selective abortions do occur, like anywhere. However, they have ALREADY been ILLEGAL for years now. And post-birth infantcide is rare to begin with. So, most of the slightly elevated M/F baby ratio is due to underreporting of female births and a higher prevalence of Hepatitis B (which naturally increases male births) - NOT "female infantcides."
3) Sons are preferred in China. TRUE.
...But only because they are seen as beasts of burden in Chinese culture. They are the ultimate providers expected to take care of their parents in their decrepit old age, their wife & kid and their wife's family as well. Parents see them as human 401Ks. Wives as walking paychecks. The country as cannon-fodder and manual labor machines. So, everybody has a vested interest in more sons being born in bondage. But as times change, girls are actually now favored in areas like Shanghai where their looks may help them excel more in business. So really, whoever can provide the highest potential benefits get favored, not necessarily just boys.
So this "son preference" is more due to self-serving traditions and only made uniquely visible in China by their socially & ecologically-responsible 1-child policy. Ok, but what about other non-Asian countries with less external motivations/"justifications"?
Dahl and Moretti offer several reasons to believe that American parents also have a strong preference...for boys over girls.Hmm, so who really has the innate gender bias here?
At least since 1941, men have told pollsters by more than a two-to-one margin that they would rather have a boy. Women have only a slight preference for daughters. Taking all of this evidence together, the authors conclude that parents in the United States do have a preference for boys over girls.
Only reason Americans don't get any flack for this is because they have no 1-child policy to make it more obvious...and they are loathe to criticize themselves anyways. But fact is, abortions are a national pasttime in this country and girl babies would get the brunt of that if families were forced to make a single choice.
4) Chinese eat dogs. TRUE.
...But it's a rare, backwoods novelty dish that's about as popular as rattlesnake or frog legs here. The primary mammalian meat staples in China are beef, chicken, pork and mutton. Dog is only served in a few restaurants in a few areas. Probably the vast majority of Chinese have never even tasted dog, or perhaps only once out of curiosity.
IRONY & HYPOCRISY
The greatest irony here though is that the very same White men who accuse Asian men as being too "sexist," will also complain that White women are "too liberated/bitchy/self-entitled." So they then specifically target women from "Old World" cultures that they perceive as "more sexist/traditional/respectful." So, they are exploiting the very same thing that they condemn! Never underestimate the power of a White man to speak through both sides of his mouth!
And meanwhile, Asian men are forced into a similar contradiction:
Coincidentally, if the stereotype of Asian American males is that we are more "submissive, respectful and obedient" than the typical non-Asian American, wouldn't we then be less domineering and more sensitive than the average American male, and thus, a better catch? I have asked many white women who have dated Asian men about this, and the majority have told me that the men that they dated treated them with more respect and were less domineering than the "typical" American man.Which is why personally, I think it's all a red herring false paradigm - and one that I'm past myself now. Truth be told, the Asian men I've dated tend to be over-romantic, over-doting and over-accommodating, if anything. And I guess I don't really have a problem with that. =)
Thanks to all those who helped me write this article (whether they knew it or not),
Rebecca Yu
posted by Rebecca Yu @ 1:52 PM
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